Sir Timothy Raison

Sir Timothy Raison, who died on November 3, his 82nd birthday, was a minister
under Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, gaining a reputation as the keeper
of the party’s conscience on such issues as immigration, refugees, child
benefit and social policy.

After his election as MP for Aylesbury in 1970, Raison was nominated by Mandrake in The Sunday Telegraph as “The Man Most Likely to Achieve” in the new Tory intake.

The column drew attention to his record, noting that he had edited no fewer than three journals: the Eton Chronicle; the Bow Group organ Crossbow; and the social science magazine New Society, of which he had been founder editor.

In addition he had been instrumental in organising World Refugee Year and had sat on the Plowden committee on primary education (signing a minority report which called for more nursery schools).

Mandrake conceded that Raison might consider its commendation a political kiss of death. But it was not the columnist that put a damper on his political hopes, but the election of Mrs Thatcher as leader of the Tory party — and for reasons that were probably as much stylistic as political.

Raison was sometimes described as on the Left of the party, but if this implied a liberal, progressive outlook, the label was wide of the mark. Instead, Raison conformed more to the stereotype of the old-style Tory paternalist who combined a concern for the welfare of the less fortunate with traditional views on the family and society.

A scholar at both Eton and Oxford, Raison also suffered from that common affliction among intellectuals — the ability to see all sides of an argument. This was perhaps most apparent in his book Power and Parliament, published shortly before the 1979 election, in which he floated a range of ideas for constitutional reform, including an elected House of Lords.

But, as Enoch Powell observed in a review of the book, “as he comes to contemplate each field in succession he is more impressed with the difficulties than his own suggestions” — leaving Powell wondering why Raison had bothered to write the book in the first place.

The habit of self-doubt was not one that appealed to Mrs Thatcher, who dropped Raison from the shadow cabinet in 1976 for lacking “toughness” and “cutting edge” in favour of the more combative Michael Heseltine. Although, thanks to the support of Willie Whitelaw, Raison served as Minister of State at the Home Office from 1979, and as Overseas Aid Minister from 1983, Mrs Thatcher remained unimpressed.

When she sacked him again in 1986, it was the first time he had had the opportunity to talk to her about his portfolio. Afterwards he wrote to his successor, Chris Patten, noting that while Mrs Thatcher had many qualities, “I cannot say that over-enthusiasm for the aid programme is one of them”.

Timothy Hugh Francis Raison was born on November 3 1929 and educated at Eton, and Christ Church, Oxford, where he read History. He began his career as a journalist, first on Picture Post (of which his father, Maxwell Raison, was managing editor), then New Scientist. While there he also edited Crossbow, and in 1962 became founder editor of New Society, where he remained until 1967.

During the 1960s Raison served on the Youth Service Development Council, the Plowden Committee and the Advisory Committee for Drug Dependence, as a co-opted member of the Inner London Education Authority, and as a member of Richmond council.

He made his maiden speech in Parliament on education and got his first step on the ministerial ladder in 1972, when he was chosen as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Whitelaw, the newly appointed Northern Ireland Secretary. The following year Heath made Raison Under-Secretary for Education and Science under Mrs Thatcher.

In opposition he served as spokesman for social services, then shadow prices secretary and shadow environment secretary with a seat in the shadow cabinet. From 1976 to 1979 he worked part-time at the Policy Studies Institute, concentrating on problems of unemployment.

As Minister of State at the Home Office, again under Whitelaw, Raison handled the immigration portfolio, predictably winning few brownie points from either side of the debate, the Guardian journalist Hugo Young castigating him for behaving more like a “bureaucratic commissar” than a former editor of New Society.

As Overseas Development minister, he did his best to press for a higher aid budget, but had little support in government and was reduced to denying the charge that Britain had “donor fatigue” over Africa’s famine problems.

On the backbenches again, Raison campaigned for the retention of inflation-proof child benefits, as well as against the poll tax and in favour of a coherent family policy. In an article in 1989, he drew attention to the high rate of family breakdown and expressed the wish that “respectability” could be respectable again. The concept, he argued, had been undermined by many things: “egalitarianism, Freudianism, the moral neutrality of television” — and feminism, which had “subverted the paterfamilias”.

Raison stood down from Parliament at the 1992 general election. He served as chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority from 1991 to 1994; as chairman of the Aylesbury Vale Community Healthcare Trust from 1992 to 1998; and as chairman of the Oxford Diocesan Committee on Care of Churches from 1998. He served on the Council of The National Trust from 1997 to 2000.

In 1967 he received the Nansen Medal for his part in originating the World Refugee Year in 1960.

Timothy Raison was sworn of the Privy Council in 1982 and knighted in 1991.

His other publications included Why Conservative? (1964) and Tories and the Welfare State (1990).

He married, in 1956, Veldes Charrington, with whom he had a son and three daughters.